Summary

Avengers: Doomsday has a massive cast of 27 characters confirmed and will mark the MCU's next big entry.
The Russo brothers are back to direct, using baseball cards to organize the huge ensemble cast.
The film is set to elevate the ensemble cast to outdo previous Avengers movies, including introducing important mutants and new characters.

Production on Avengers: Doomsday is finally in full swing, and the size of the film’s already confirmed massive cast has ushered in the return of an Infinity Saga tradition for keeping the who’s who of the Marvel Cinematic Universe properly organized.

Avengers: Doomsday is set to be the MCU’s next big entry, marking the first Avengers project since the Infinity Saga came to a close with the climactic Avengers: Endgame. The franchise has seen a downturn since that high point in 2019, motivating the brass at Marvel Studios to bring the Russo brothers back into the fold. The return of the Russos, who were the brains behind Endgame and the preceding Avengers: Infinity War, immediately piques fan interest in the project, which many saw as rushed and expected to fall short. Adding to the building anticipation, Marvel Studios confirmed 27 characters for Avengers: Doomsday in a recent livestream-style reveal, which saw the names of the actors returning for the project appear on the backs of production set chairs.

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Despite the expansive cast reveal, fans expect that even more characters will board Avengers: Doomsday regardless of whether or not they got a chair. That’s a lot of personnel to keep track of for even the most attentive veteran directors, and the Russo brothers are no exception. In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the duo was asked if they were keeping track of the massive cast of the film with custom baseball cards, a tactic some hardcore fans will remember from the production of previous Russo-led Avengers films. “Yes, we continue to use the baseball cards,” Anthony Russo confirmed, with Joe following up by saying, “Now they have magnets on them so we can put ‘em on a board and look at ‘em. It’s the only way to keep track of the amount of characters that we’re working with.” As Joe confirmed here, the custom cards, which feature the MCU’s actors on the front and contract details on the flip side, are pretty much the only way the creatives crafting the project can keep up.

Russo Brothers promoting Avengers Doomsday

The return of the card strategy is certainly going to be essential for the upcoming films, which are well on track to feature more than 30 high-profile Marvel characters in addition to what is sure to be a proportionally large supporting cast and crew. Part of the plan for the Russos’ return was to restore a central narrative to the MCU with these Avengers films, which means that the duo pretty much has to bring in all the disparate players from the last few years and work all those factions and standalones into a single, overarching plot. This has already been confirmed to include most of the Thunderbolts* (spoiling potential character deaths in the process), as well as Marvel’s most important mutants and the few Avengers left from the first saga. In addition to those, there’s the potential addition of Spider-Man characters from the upcoming fourth film, members of the Young Avengers that Kamala Khan seems to be assembling off-screen, the magical elements introduced in Agatha All Along, and even the street-level characters of Daredevil: Born Again.

It’s been made clear by the duo themselves that the Russos want to outdo their previous Avengers movies with Doomsday and Secret Wars, and that means elevating the ensemble cast in the same way that the original Avengers were. Without the advantage of the same sort of decade-long build that Infinity War benefited from, Doomsday is going to have to go above and beyond to make these characters matter and introduce multiple key players from the X-Men. Fans will have to wait and see how this goes for the franchise when the upcoming Avengers films finally hit theaters. On the other side, Marvel might want to look into making the front end of those cards available for fans as merch.

Avengers: Doomsday hit theaters on May 1, 2026, while Avengers: Secret Wars will be released on May 7, 2027.

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